A Methodology for Analyzing the Transient Reliability of Systems with Identical Components and Identical Repairmen

In this paper, the Markov models, eigenvectors and eigenvalue concepts are used to propose a methodology for analyzing the transient reliability of a system with identical components and identical repairmen. The components of the systems under consideration can have two distinct configurations, namely; they can be arranged in series or in parallel. A third case is also considered, in which the system is up (good) if k-out-of-n components are good. For all three cases, a procedure is proposed for calculating the transient probability of the system availability and the duration of the system to reach the steady state.